It’s not just possible, it’s demonstrable. When we rebuilt the propeciahelp website I put a quote from a popular science book with the bell curve analogy in the context of PFS on the info on post finasteride syndrome page which puts it in very simple terms.
@morpheuss, have you been posting before under another name? I am surprised to see someone sign up and be using words like “protocol” and suggesting “cure” in less than a day.
Hi guys - on the behalf of the staff I just want to give a bit of context and our opinion this suggestion could well be extremely and irreversibly harmful. After six years of PFS that i did not know was PFS as for those years my phenotypical presentation entailed muscle wasting with exercise and weight loss that could not be reversed, I developed an extreme degree of entirely new effected domains on rechallenge. I crashed two days after and was disabled to the point I had to be looked after by others. I suffered severe cognitive problems, derealisation, anhedonia, anxiety, severe insomnia, night sweats, significant and rapid penile damage (not variable) with genital/prostate/perineal pain that has persisted 24/7 since, loss of sexual function and erectile function, loss of sperm production, problems with my autonomic breathing and sleep apnea in the short sleep I get, bone and teeth pain and many more. To be clear, I had none of these in six years and didnt know this was biologically possible. They onset like a lightening strike after I took it again in ignorance of it causing my (then manageable) health problems.
This topic seems to be a confused interpretation of what @awor set out ten years ago in a paper entitled “the 5ARI withdrawal syndrome” which spelt out in detail a potential mechanism in which we would be dealing with a deregulated AR and consequences including significant depletion of neurosteroids. His work is the sole reason people are saying “AR” a lot across this and other patient websites. He helped set up the first study of PFS patients to confirm differences in AR expression. A significant increase in nuclear AR intensity (2x) between controls and PFS patients with penile damage and pain was recorded in all measured cell lines of prepuce tissue, correlating to severity of symptoms. So, we do already have objective evidence of epigenetic changes in PFS patients, and this has now been suggested by some professors as a plausible driving factor in PFS. @awor was involved with the design of an ongoing study funded by the foundation to hopefully give us more data in this direction. We are currently working on another paper to provide to the scientists who support our work and the scientists in related areas we additionally need looking at this issue.
Please bear in mind it is important to maintain humility with regard to the complexity of this issue; a paragraph is not going to “cure” it. In regards to this idea, there is no specificity here nor a plausible mechanism to what is being discussed beyond the known effect we warn everyone regarding when it comes to readministration of 5aris or antiandrogenic substances. Improving on them is no surprise scientifically or anecdotally: Has anyone tried Saw Palmetto or fin after developing pfs?
Even if there were a rationale here, as @Trump_1776 pointed out finasteride cannot be practically tapered, there cannot be any informed dosing as to an unknown and variable predisposition and site-specific and variable outcome, and as @Invictus pointed out (and @awor did) patterns of superphysiologic androgens (T/DHT) have been tried many times over many years.
So if it’s something you feel like doing, this is our opinion on the matter. This is written out of responsibility to our members as others have suffered after antiandrogenic medicines and substances pursued to therapeutic ends and it’s important this is made clear.
Thanks and take care everyone